European, Chinese Satellites Watch Solar Storms Pummel Earth

Scientists have long understood that satellites are at risk from bombardment by solar storms. Now, they’ve gotten a closer look at how the storms are punishing Earth’s magnetosphere, leaving satellites exposed.

The movie above, and the solar flare video below, were released by the European Space Agency today, along with descriptions of two solar eruptions spotted using ESA’s four Cluster satellites and the two Chinese/ESA Double Star satellites. 

High-energy (X-3) solar flare on 13 December 2006. Credit: ESA/NASA/SOHO
High-energy (X-3) solar flare on 13 December 2006. Credit: ESA/NASA/SOHO

Under normal solar conditions, satellites orbit within the magnetosphere — the protective magnetic bubble carved out by Earth’s magnetic field. But when solar activity increases, the picture changes significantly: the magnetosphere gets compressed and particles get energized, exposing satellites to higher doses of radiation that can perturb signal reception.

Scientists have found that extreme solar activity drastically compresses the magnetosphere and modifies the composition of ions in the near-Earth environment. They are now challenged to model how these changes affect orbiting satellites, including the GPS system.

During two extreme solar explosions, or solar flares, on January 21, 2005 and December 13, 2006, the Cluster constellation and the two Double Star satellites were favorably positioned to observe the events on a large scale. 

During both events, the velocity of positively charged particles in the solar wind was found to be higher than 900 km (559 miles) per second, more than twice their normal speed. In addition, the density of charged particles around Earth was recorded at five times higher than normal. The measurements taken in January 2005 also showed a drastic change in ion composition. 

The second explosion in December 2006 released extremely powerful high-energy X-rays followed by a huge amount of mass from the solar atmosphere (called a coronal mass ejection). During the event, GPS signal reception on ground was lost. 

Typical nose-like ion structures in near-Earth space were washed out as energetic particles were injected into the magnetosphere. These nose-like structures, that had formed earlier in the ‘ring current’ in the equatorial region near Earth, were detected simultaneously on opposite sides of Earth. Measurements of the ring current showed that its strength had increased. 

These factors together caused the magnetosphere to be compressed. Data show that the ‘nose’ of the dayside magnetopause (the outer boundary of the magnetosphere), usually located about 60,000 km (40,000 miles) from Earth, was only 25,000 km (15,000 miles) away.

About five hours after the coronal mass ejection hit Earth’s magnetosphere, a Double Star satellite observed penetrating solar energetic particles on the night side. These particles are hazardous to astronauts as well as satellites.

“With these detailed observations, we’ll be able to plug in data and better estimate what happens to the inner magnetosphere and near-Earth space during such explosions on the Sun,” said Iannis Dandouras, principal investigator of the Cluster Ion Spectrometer and lead author on a paper about the findings. 

“Looking at such a large-scale physical phenomena with a single satellite is akin to predicting the impact of a tsunami with a single buoy,” added Matt Taylor, ESA’s Project Scientist for Cluster and Double Star. “With Cluster and Double Star we have monitored both sides of Earth simultaneously, and obtained valuable in-situ data.”

The results appear in the February 2009) issue of Advances in Space Research. The abstract is available here.

Source: ESA

Rogue Black Holes May Wander the Galaxy

Artists concept of a rogue black hole floating near a globular cluster star near the outskirts of the Milky Way. Credit: David A. Aguilar, CfA

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Here’s another “rogue black hole” theory, which hopefully doesn’t set the doomsday crowd off on a new tangent. But new research suggests that hundreds of massive black holes, left over from the early galaxy-building days of the Universe, may wander the Milky Way. Astrophysicists Ryan O’Leary and Avi Loeb say that rogue black holes originally lurked at the centers of tiny, low-mass galaxies. Over billions of years, those dwarf galaxies smashed together to form full-sized galaxies like the Milky Way. But they also predict that Earth should be safe, as the closest rogue black hole should reside thousands of light-years away.

“These black holes are relics of the Milky Way’s past,” said Loeb, from the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “You could say that we are archaeologists studying those relics to learn about our galaxy’s history and the formation history of black holes in the early universe.”

Astronomers say if these wandering black holes could be located, they could provides clues to the formation of the Milky Way.

The theory predicts that each time two proto-galaxies with central black holes collided, their black holes merged to form a single, “relic” black hole. During the merger, directional emission of gravitational radiation would cause the black hole to recoil. A typical kick would send the black hole speeding outward fast enough to escape its host dwarf galaxy, but not fast enough to leave the galactic neighborhood completely. As a result, such black holes would still be around today in the outer reaches of the Milky Way halo.

This sounds similar to another “rogue black hole” theory released in 2008 from Vanderbilt University, where a supercomputer simulation predicted colliding black holes created in globular clusters would be kicked out of their home and left to wander the galaxy. Astronomers have been looking for them for years, and even after all that searching, they’ve only come up with a couple of tentative candidates.
But Loeb and O’Leary say hundreds of rogue black holes should be traveling the Milky Way’s outskirts, each containing the mass of 1,000 to 100,000 suns. They would be difficult to spot on their own because a black hole is visible only when it is swallowing, or accreting, matter.

There could be on telltale sign, however. A surrounding cluster of stars could be yanked from the dwarf galaxy when the black hole escaped. Only the stars closest to the black hole would be tugged along, so the cluster would be very compact.

But still it would be hard to determine. Due to the cluster’s small size on the sky, appearing to be a single star, astronomers would have to look for more subtle clues to its existence and origin. For example, its spectrum would show that multiple stars were present, together producing broad spectral lines. The stars in the cluster would be moving rapidly, their paths influenced by the gravity of the black hole.
O’Leary and Loeb say now that they know what to look for, astronomers should begin scanning the skies for a population of highly compact star clusters in the Milky Way’s halo.

The number of rogue black holes in our galaxy will depend on how many of the proto-galactic building blocks contained black holes at their cores, and how those proto-galaxies merged to form the Milky Way. Finding and studying them will provide new clues about the history of our galaxy.

Loeb and O’Leary’s journal paper will be published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and is available online at arXiv.

Mars Rovers Are “Good Old Girls”


Our beloved Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity have seemingly touched us all with their amazing discoveries and their apparently quite different and quirky personalities, but most of all with their durability and resilience. They’ve survived through two rough Martian winters and a couple of nasty dust storms, not to mention persevering through everything the JPL scientists and engineers have asked them to do (climbing hills, descending into craters, for example) and putting on more mileage than anyone ever thought possible. To honor the rovers and to commemorate their five years on Mars, one of my fellow Solar System Ambassadors, Steve Hammond, has created a video of highlights from the rovers, set to music by the very talented Marion Call with her song “Good Old Girl.” Steve says in his blog, Ridiculous Thoughts, that the topic he gets the most request for as a Solar System Ambassador is Mars, and particularly the rovers. “Public interest hasn’t waned. It seems that everybody I talk to knows Spirit and Opportunity by name, and at least some highlights of their mission. People genuinely care about these little robots.” Thanks to Steve for sharing the video. Enjoy!
Continue reading “Mars Rovers Are “Good Old Girls””

Herschel and Planck Set to Launch on May 14

The Herschel and Planck spacecraft. Credit: ESA

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The European Space Agency announced today that the Herschel and Planck spacecraft will now launch on May 14. Liftoff had been delayed to allow time for additional checks on the Ariane 5 ECA launch vehicle. The two spacecraft are launching together in what was originally a cost saving move, but the complexity of preparing two spacecraft at once has caused frequent delays and cost overruns. However, now that the launch is near, hopefully the cutting-edge technologies included in both spacecraft will soon pay off in new discoveries astronomy and cosmology.

The Herschel Space Observatory’s primary mirror is the largest single mirror ever built for a space telescope. At 3.5-meters in diameter the mirror will collect long-wavelength radiation from some of the coldest and most distant objects in the Universe. The mirror is also a technological wonder: it uses 12 silicon carbide petals fused together into a single piece. Herschel will be the only space observatory to cover a spectral range from the far infrared to sub-millimeter.

Launch configuration for the Herschel and Planck spacecraft. Credit: ESA
Launch configuration for the Herschel and Planck spacecraft. Credit: ESA

Planck is designed to image the anisotropies of the Cosmic Background Radiation Field over the whole sky, with unprecedented sensitivity and angular resolution. It will provide a major source of information relevant to several cosmological and astrophysical issues, such as testing theories of the early universe and the origin of cosmic structure.

The two satellites are being prepared for launch and recently were both fueled with hydrazine. Planck’s three-stage active cryogenic cooler, needed to keep the instruments at extremely cold temperatures, has been filled with helium-3 and helium-4. Herschel’s cryogenic tanks are also being filled with superfluid helium.
Herschel and Planck will liftoff from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana

Source: ESA

Icebergs Breaking Away from Wilkins Ice Shelf

Icebergs coming off of a collapsed ice bridge on the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica. Credits: ESA (Annotations by A. Humbert, Münster University)

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The latest satellite images show that icebergs have begun to break away from the northern front of the Wilkins Ice Shelf – indicating that the huge shelf has become unstable. This follows the collapse three weeks ago of the ice bridge that had previously linked the Antarctic mainland to Charcot Island. On April 24, satellite data from ESA’s Envisat satellite and the German Aerospace Centre’s TerraSAR-X satellite showed that the first icebergs had started to break away from the fragile ice shelf. A very rough estimate suggests that, so far, about 700 sq km of ice has been lost from the Wilkins Ice Shelf.

Three weeks ago, the ice bridge shattered very quickly, but it is expected that the current discharge of ice will continue for some weeks. The process where portions of a glacier’s leading edge break off as icebergs into an adjacent body of water is known as “calving” and this is occurring as a result of fracture zones that have formed over the last 15 years and which turned Wilkins into a fragile and vulnerable ice shelf.

Click here for a “movie” of the how the Wilkins Ice Shelf has changed from January 2008 to April 2009.

A TerraSAR-X stripmap image from 23 April 2009. The larger icebergs are bright, while smaller icebergs are capsized and appear as dark blocks. The inset shows two superimposed Envisat ASAR images from 24 and 27 April. The region outlined in red indicates the area of the TerraSAR-X image.   Credits: DLR, ESA (Annotations by A. Humbert, Münster University
A TerraSAR-X stripmap image from 23 April 2009. The larger icebergs are bright, while smaller icebergs are capsized and appear as dark blocks. The inset shows two superimposed Envisat ASAR images from 24 and 27 April. The region outlined in red indicates the area of the TerraSAR-X image. Credits: DLR, ESA (Annotations by A. Humbert, Münster University

“The retreat of Wilkins Ice Shelf is the latest and the largest of its kind. Eight separate ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula have shown signs of retreat over the last few decades. There is little doubt that these changes are the result of atmospheric warming on the Antarctic Peninsula, which has been the most rapid in the Southern Hemisphere,” explained David Vaughan from the British Antarctic Survey.

Map of Antarctica showing the location of the Wilkins Ice Shelf. Credit: ESA
Map of Antarctica showing the location of the Wilkins Ice Shelf. Credit: ESA

“The changes to Wilkins Ice Shelf provide a fabulous natural laboratory that will allow us to understand how ice shelves respond to climate change and what the future will hold for the rest of Antarctica,” Vaughan commented. “The quality and frequency of images acquired by ESA satellites mean that the break-up of Wilkins Ice Shelf can be analyzed far more effectively than any previous event. For the first time, I think, we can really begin to see the processes that have brought about the demise of the ice shelf.”

However, it is still unclear how the situation will evolve, Humbert said. “We are not sure if a new stable ice front will now form between Latady Island, Petrie Ice Rises and Dorsey Island. If the connection to Latady Island is lost, the projected loss of 3370 sq km of ice might be greater – though we have no indication that this will happen in the near future.”

Source: ESA

Latest from Saturn: Pastel Rings and Moons by the Bunch

Saturn's rings in pastel. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

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The latest images from the Cassini spacecraft include this gorgeous natural color view of Saturn’s inner rings. Visible are the different degrees of transparency of the rings, which appear almost pastel in color. The dark shadows of the rings separate Saturn’s southern hemisphere in the bottom of the image from the north. The innermost D ring is invisible, laid over the planet’s northern hemisphere. The translucent C ring runs through the middle of the image. The denser B ring stretches across the top of the image. See below for more info on this image, as well as a challenge to “find the moons” on another Cassini image.

The view in the top image looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 48 degrees below the ringplane. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 28, 2009 at a distance of approximately 1 million kilometers (620,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 59 kilometers (37 miles) per pixel.

Three of Saturn's moons bunch together in this image by Cassini.  Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.  Click for larger image.
Three of Saturn's moons bunch together in this image by Cassini. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute. Click for larger image.

Can you find the three moons in this image? Janus (179 kilometers, or 111 miles across) sits bright and overexposed outside the faint F ring. Prometheus (86 kilometers, 53 miles across) lies inside the F ring to the left of the center of the image.

Have you given up on finding the third moon? Well, don’t feel bad — Tiny Daphnis (8 kilometers, or 5 miles across) is in there somewhere, but it’s not visible in the thin Keeler Gap of the A ring just below Prometheus in this image.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 20 degrees below the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on March 2, 2009. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.1 million kilometers (684,000 miles) from Janus and at a Sun-Janus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 47 degrees. Image scale is 63 kilometers (39 miles) per pixel.

Source: Cassini Equinox Mission homepage

Portal to the Universe Now Open

Screenshot of PTTU.

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If you like RSS feeds, readers or other news aggregators, there’s a new website available that focuses on astronomy and space news. Called Portal to the Universe, it is the latest Cornerstone project of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009). Universe Today is one of the sites featured, and PTTU includes other news sites, blogs, video podcasts, audio podcasts, images, videos, and more. Don’t worry: PTTU isn’t trying to replace Universe Today or any other sites or blogs. The goal of this new site is to get the word out on what is being featured on all the different space and astronomy sites and push more readers their way. It’s all about community.

PTTU also includes Web 2.0 collaborative tools, such as the ranking of different services according to popularity, and a range of “widgets” to tap into all sorts of existing “live data”, such as near-live pictures of the Sun, live positions of spacecraft or live observations from telescopes.

From PTTU’s press release:

Portal to the Universe will help the user to sift constructively through the wealth of information available and will promote interactions within the astronomy multimedia community. A The vision for the Portal is to enable real-time access to content by aggregating (pulling) from providers of dynamic content like blogs, images, news, etc., and distributing (pushing) to users, as well as indexing and archiving, collecting and maintaining a central repository of useful information. RSS feeds and standardized metadata make it possible to tie all the suppliers of astronomy information together with a single, semi-automatically updating portal. The result is a technologically advanced site that brings together strands of astronomy content from across the worldwide web.

Project Manager Lars Lindberg Christensen says: “The project will develop with, and around, the community’s needs and lots of new features are planned, including adding resources such as educational materials, addresses for all astronomy stakeholders such as amateur clubs, planetariums and observatories.”

Source: PTTU press release

In Your Eyes – The NGC 4486 Jet by JP Metsavainio

Parallel NGC 4486 Jet by JP Metsavainio

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We’re all familiar with the photo of the jet of material emanating from the core of the Virgo A galaxy as imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope, but this 5,000 light year long streamer coming from the nucleus of M87 has never been more “in your eyes” than it is through the stereo magic visualizations produced by Jukka Metsavainio. Are you ready to take a closer look at this relativistic jet of extremely powerful plasma emerging from one of the best studied radio galaxies around? Then step inside…

Whenever we present a dimensional visualization it is done in two fashions. The first is called “Parallel Vision” and it is much like a magic eye puzzle. When you open the full size image and your eyes are the correct distance from the screen, the images will seem to merge and create a 3D effect. However, for some folks, this doesn’t work well – so Jukka has also created the “Cross Version”, where you simply cross your eyes and the images will merge, creating a central image which appears 3D. As we learned with the last image, it might not always work for all people, but there are a few other tricks you can try. Now sit back and prepare to be blown away…

Cross NGC 4486 Jet by JP Metsavainio
Cross NGC 4486 Jet by JP Metsavainio

The year is 1918, and high on top of Mt. Hamilton at Lick Observatory an astronomer named Herbert Curtis is busy studying Messier Object 87. But, Mr. Curtis isn’t your ordinary garden-variety astronomer. In just two more years, he and a man named Harlow Shapely were going to have it out publicly about the nature of these “distant fuzzies” and Curtis was going to be eventually proved correct: Spiral “nebulae” were indeed galaxies just like our own. However, good old Herbert was noticing something about M87 that would take nearly 8 decades to discover its true nature… a “curious straight ray” coming straight from its heart. Now, you’ve got to give Herbert some very big credit for being an astute visual observer, because this was back in the day long before wide field imaging camera, infra-red technology, x-ray photography, radio studies and more. Heck, it would be 2 more years before Hubble began identifying Cepheid variables and 10 more years before interstellar absorption was discovered!

Are you ready to fast forward to 1977? Because it would be about that long before another noble name in galaxy studies would again reveal astonishing visual things about M87’s jet by resolving knots and clouds – Halton C. Arp of Mt. Palomar and J. Lorre of JPL. “The shred itself, however, is the object of most significance for establishing the reality of the ejection of the radio source. It is difficult to make a quantitative statement, but objects of this nature are not frequently seen. The inference is plain that the radio source has either left a wake behind it, (i.e. condensations along its track) or that this is some kind of jet or material associated with the ejection of the radio source form the parent peculiar galaxy.”

It wasn’t long until the discovery of a disk of rapidly rotating gas around the nucleus of M87 occurred and thanks to the Hubble Space telescope, we were taking closer than ever looks into the violent active nucleus of this galaxy. “We see almost a dozen clouds which appear to be moving out from the galaxy’s center at between four and six times the speed of light. These are all located in a narrow jet of gas streaming out from the region of the black hole at the galaxy’s center,” said Dr. John Biretta of the Space Telescope Science Institute. “We believe this apparent speed translates into an actual velocity just slightly below that of light itself.”

What we know now is the jet in M87 connects the innermost black hole to the outer parts of the source. It supplies the radio source and the surrounding region with energy and relativistic plasma. The speeds reported are two to three times faster than the fastest motions previously recorded in M87, the only nearby galaxy to show evidence for superluminal motion. “This discovery goes a long way towards confirming that radio galaxies, quasars and exotic BL Lac objects are basically the same beast, powered by super massive black holes, and differ only in orientation with respect to the observer,” Biretta said.

And this time the orientation is right in your eyes…

Many thanks to JP Metsavainio of Northern Galactic for his magic with Hubble Space Telescope images and allowing us this incredible look inside another mystery of space.

Carnival of Space Reaches the Big 100

Can you believe it? 100 Carnivals of Space thus far. This milestone Carnival is hosted by Brian Ventrudo over at One Minute Astronomer.

Click here to read the Carnival of Space #100.

And if you’re interested in looking back, here’s an archive to all the past carnivals of space. If you’ve got a space-related blog, you should really join the carnival. Just email an entry to [email protected], and the next host will link to it. It will help get awareness out there about your writing, help you meet others in the space community – and community is what blogging is all about. And if you really want to help out, let Fraser know if you can be a host, and he’ll schedule you into the calendar.

Finally, if you run a space-related blog, please post a link to the Carnival of Space. Help us get the word out.

GRB Smashes Record for Most Distant Known Object

The fading infrared afterglow of GRB 090423 appears in the center of this false-color image taken with the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii. The burst is the farthest cosmic explosion yet seen. Credit: Gemini Observatory/NSF/AURA, D. Fox and A. Cucchiara (Penn State Univ.) and E. Berger (Harvard Univ.)

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A really, really long time ago in a galaxy far away, a massive star exploded. On April 23, 2009, the Swift satellite detected that explosion. This spectacular gamma ray burst was seen 13 billion light years away, with a redshift of 8.2, the highest ever measured. As we hinted yesterday, this object is now the most distant known object, and the burst occurred when the Universe was only 630 million years old, a mere one-twentieth of its current age. This event, called GRB 090423, can tell us much about the early Universe. “We completely smashed the record with this one,” said Edo Berger, a professor at Harvard University and a member of the team that first measured the burst’s origin. “This demonstrates for the first time that massive stars existed in the early Universe.”

At 3:55 a.m. EDT on April 23, Swift detected a ten-second-long gamma-ray burst of modest brightness, and quickly slewed around to use its Ultraviolet/Optical and X-Ray telescopes on the burst location. Swift saw a fading X-ray afterglow but nothing in visible light. A number of ground based telescopes were alerted to the event and within three hours began to observe the distant GRB.

“This was a pretty amazing event,” Berger told Universe Today. “Swift detected this gamma ray burst on April 23 and we immediately followed it up with the Gemini North Telescope in Hawaii, after it was demonstrated it did not have a visible light counterpart. That was the initial hint that this might be a distant object. We observed it in infrared and we found in the different infrared bands that there was a sharp break at a wavelength of about 1.1 microns.”

The drop-out corresponds to a redshift of 8.2 and burst distance of about 13 billion light-years.

Other telescopes that made observations were the Very Large Telescope, STFC’s United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT), The Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG), the Okayama Astrophysical Observatory, the Fermi Space Telescope and the Plateau de Bure Interferometer.

Subsequent observations the following night from other telescopes confirmed and refined the measurement. Previously, the most distant known object was a galaxy with a redshift of 6.96 discovered in 2006. The most distant GRB found September of 2008 had a redshift of 6.7. “We completely smashed the record with this one,”said Berger. “I think people were thinking it would happen step by step, but we kind of jumped things.”

Berger said the burst itself was not unusual; it was a basic a run-of-the–mill GRB. But even that can convey a lot of information. “That might mean that even these early generations of stars are very similar to stars in the local universe, that when they die they seem to produce similar types of gamma ray bursts, but it might be a little early to speculate.”

Distribution of redshifts and corresponding age of the Universe for gamma-ray bursts detected by NASA's Swift satellite. The new GRB 090423 at a redshift of z=8.2 easily broke the previous record for gamma-ray bursts, and also exceeds the highest redshift galaxy and quasar discovered to date, making it the most distant known object in the Universe. GRB 090423 exploded on the scene when the Universe was only 630 million years old, and its light has been travelling to us for over 13 billion years. Credit: Edo Berger (Harvard/CfA
Distribution of redshifts and corresponding age of the Universe for gamma-ray bursts detected by NASA's Swift satellite. The new GRB 090423 at a redshift of z=8.2 easily broke the previous record for gamma-ray bursts, and also exceeds the highest redshift galaxy and quasar discovered to date, making it the most distant known object in the Universe. GRB 090423 exploded on the scene when the Universe was only 630 million years old, and its light has been travelling to us for over 13 billion years. Credit: Edo Berger (Harvard/CfA


So what does this distant GRB tell us about the early Universe? “This happened a little more than 13 billion years ago,” said Berger. “We’ve essentially been able to find gamma ray bursts throughout the Universe. The nearest ones are only about 100 million light years away, and this most distant one is 13 billion light years away, so it seems that they populate the entire universe. This most distant one demonstrates for the first time that massive stars exist at those very high red shifts. This is something people have suspected for a long time, but there was no direct observational proof. So that is one of the cool results from this observation.”

Berger said this event also tells us that perhaps GRBs are the best objects to study which show how the early Universe evolved. “They are extremely bright and very easy to find, comparatively speaking, so they give us hope that this is the right approach. Over the years people have found high redshift quasars and galaxies, but my suspicion is that until the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope the middle of the next decade, this object will remain as the record holder. No other telescope, including the Hubble Space Telescope is capable of finding more distant objects.”

Finding this distant object also demonstrates how telescopes around the world can work together. “It’s the combination of Swift pinpointing where these objects are located and the ground-based telescopes immediately responding to these positions and then demonstrating the distance,” said Berger. “It’s really a great synergy. We’ve been doing this for a long time now, and I think part of what has been driving this is the desire to find such distant objects.

Berger said astronomers have been speculating about such distant gamma rays bursts for quite some time and there are two missions being proposed to NASA as the next generation gamma ray telescopes. So, now, the fact that we’ve now found one at such a high distance makes those satellites more attractive for funding because this has now gone from being an idea or gut feeling to real observational proof.”

Source: Interview with Edo Berger